Angolans See Peace Pact as Last, Best Chance to End Suffering

When the letter from his brother arrived in May, Jeremias Samalungo knew that the country’s long, cruel war was really over.

Samalungo hadn’t seen or heard from his brother since 1980, when the 14-year-old was kidnapped by fighters with the UNITA rebel army and forced to join their ranks.

Two years after his brother was stolen from him, Samalungo joined the government army and fought the guerrillas until 1992. He became a civilian, married and had a family. Life was hard. The disappearance of his brother tormented him. His mother died without ever learning the fate of her lost son.

Time and again, cease-fire agreements broke down, crushing expectations that the war that had been ravaging this southwest African nation since 1975 would ever come to an end.

But when Samalungo was finally reunited with his brother last month, nine weeks after Angola’s latest cease-fire, the event signaled a new beginning for Samalungo and his family, and better times ahead.

“To me, it means that finally all this suffering has come to an end,” said Samalungo, 38, a member of the support staff of an international aid agency in the battle-scarred town of Kuito, 350 miles southeast of the capital, Luanda. His brother is now 36. “I personally believe that peace has now come forever.”

The challenges are daunting: rebuilding a country that has been ripped apart by conflict since it gained independence from Portugal 27 years ago, continued suspicion among members of the warring sides, and the specter of renewed violence. All these cast doubt on prospects for lasting peace in Angola.

But many Angolans have been desperately clinging to hope since the April 4 peace agreement was signed by the Angolan government and the rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, or UNITA, its Portuguese acronym.

Local political analysts, foreign diplomats and ordinary Angolans herald the pact as the best-ever possibility for a cessation of turmoil in this country.

The expectation for sustainable peace is widely linked to the death of hard-line UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, who was killed in a battle with government forces in February. He was seen as a major obstacle to previous peace efforts and blamed by many for prolonging the war that claimed at least half a million lives and displaced 4 million people--a third of the population.

But while the fighting has stopped and people and goods have started to flow down roads and across provincial borders previously under siege, the difficulties facing Angola’s efforts to normalize are so enormous that many fear the hardships may threaten prospects for long-lasting stability.

“If you are talking about fighting, then yes, the war is over,” said Justino Pinto de Andrade, director of the faculty of economics at Luanda’s Catholic University of Angola. “But social and economic peace have not yet come.”

More than 82,000 former rebel fighters have to be demobilized and, along with more than 250,000 of their family members, re-integrated into society.

This will be a major feat in a country where unemployment tops 70%. The peace deal allows for the integration of just 5,500 UNITA fighters into the government armed forces.

Devastated Economy

Angola’s economy is in tatters, with the manufacturing industry virtually at a standstill, and commercial agriculture almost nonexistent. Land mines litter landscapes where crops once were planted. For more than a quarter of a century, few children have had access to proper schooling. Hospitals are dilapidated and lack basic supplies. Only some sections of the capital have a consistent supply of electricity--a luxury in other towns. Few in the provinces remember what it was like to have regular running water.

Despite these challenges--and the knowledge that previous cease-fires have failed--most Angolans said they would rather fight for a better quality of life than fight on the battlefield.

People simply need to believe that this time, peace is here to stay.

“The country is really tired of war,” said Gen. Geraldo Sachipengo Nunda, deputy chief of the Angolan army. “The Angolan forces as well as UNITA are just exhausted. But the biggest reason of all is the Angolan people feel the country could never tolerate a new war.”

For the UNITA forces and their families who have moved into the country’s 34 “quartering areas,” or demobilization camps, the new fight is just making it through each day.

Food and medicine here are in short supply. Relief workers say malnutrition is widespread, because thousands have been living in isolation for years without sufficient nourishment and shelter.

The plight of the soldiers adds to an already desperate humanitarian situation plaguing this oil- and diamond-rich nation nearly twice the size of Texas.

The U.N. World Food Program estimates that its food stocks will run out by September. The response from international donors has so far been tepid.

Other relief agencies concur that tens of thousands of people could face starvation if adequate assistance doesn’t arrive soon.

Broken bridges, land mines and derelict roads and airstrips have exacerbated the logistical nightmare of transporting supplies.

UNITA leaders say hundreds of their fighters and their relatives have already died of hunger-related ailments and other diseases.

At a demobilization camp near Gamba, a settlement 35 miles from here, many ex-soldiers are too weak to do anything but perch on stools outside neat rows of straw huts that they hurriedly erected in April to shelter their families.

The camp’s 7,000-plus inhabitants only recently started receiving food aid. While the former fighters complain that the donations of vegetable oil, corn-soy blend, salt and sugar are too meager, they concede that the rations are better than going hungry--as was the case for many of them during the war.

“Military life was never any good,” said Santos Jamba, 41, a UNITA fighter since 1978, who arrived at the Gamba camp in April with his wife and two of their nine children. “There was no food, no blankets, no medicine, nothing. Now my life is changing a little. It is from here that we can begin a different life.”

Despite Jamba’s belief that his lot is improving, concern is growing that other, more desperate, former rebels might abandon the demobilization camps and turn to crime if they don’t see a speedy transformation of their predicament. Several hundred former guerrilla fighters have reportedly left the camps in search of food, and some relief workers blame them for a recent spate of attacks on remote villages.

But senior UNITA officials say they’re confident that the camp conditions won’t derail the cease-fire.

“We believe in this peace process,” said Gen. Geraldo Abreu Muengo Ukwachitembo Kamorteiro, UNITA’s chief of staff. “All Angolans are aware that at last we can have another way of fighting [for what we want] besides war, which has not only destroyed the country, but the soul of the nation.”

In addition to disarming the rebels, the peace accord legalizes UNITA and transforms it into the country’s main political opposition to the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA, led by President Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

But critics question the government’s commitment to making the former rebels a significant part of the country’s political patchwork.

“The government is playing a dirty game,” said Pinto de Andrade, the university analyst. “What it wants is for UNITA people to be in the quartering areas, so that it can avoid military fights. But as soon as the government realizes there is no chance for UNITA to go back to war, it will do everything it can to reduce UNITA’s political potential. This government will do everything it can to stay in power.”

While politicians squabble, ordinary Angolans are trying to get back to normal lives. The reopening of some roads has seen a cautious revival of domestic trade and commerce.

Peace has encouraged long-distance truck driver Carlos Manuel Ferreira to get back on the road.

“I can move more freely now,” said Ferreira, 29, recalling how he was ambushed in 1998 and his cargo pillaged by UNITA guerrillas. “I leave Luanda at 8 p.m. I drive all night and arrive at my destination by 6 a.m. the next morning. During the war, that was not possible. It would take me four days for the same trip. I’m very happy.”

Psychological Toll

The war, however, has taken a massive psychological toll. Insomnia, nightmares, anxiety, depression and heart disease have become the norm for many people here, said Carlinhos Zassala, a leading Angolan psychologist.

“Post-traumatic stress disorder is seen throughout the population,” Zassala said. “A small frustration can generate a big frustration. For example, if a wife prepares lunch too late, a husband could take a gun and shoot her. The situation doesn’t justify the reaction.”

And children haven’t been spared.

“Today, if you want to buy a toy for an Angolan child, they don’t want a bike or a car. They prefer a [toy] gun,” Zassala said.

For many, the psychological trauma is accompanied by physical distress.

More than 100,000 people have been mutilated, many of them by land mines. Recently publicized Angolan government statistics estimate that 4 million to 5 million land mines still pepper agricultural fields and roads and surround military installations. They maim and kill about 60 people each month.

Relief workers said they expected an increase in the number of land-mine victims as thousands of displaced people try to return to their homesteads and resume farming.

Still, hope for Angola’s eventual recovery continues to be strengthened by stories like that of the Samalungo brothers. The tears of joy that flowed the day of their reunion have already helped to wash away the agony of years of separation and provided a promise that they can pick up where they left off.

“He changed a lot,” Jeremias Samalungo said of his brother, who is now married with four children. “He is big. He has a beard. But he still puts his head to one side when he talks, and his jawline, that’s still the same.”